Posted Feb 16, 2015, 5:43 AM
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Cat Enthusiast
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Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: America's Magic City
Posts: 3,861
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A good read for those among us to have continued to be pessimistic about Birmingham's future...
Don't believe Birmingham has changed? See what's happening now
John Archibald
Birmingham News
AL.com
February 15, 2015
LINK
Quote:
Birmingham is changing.
Not like they used to say changing. Not in that code that too often dripped with racial innuendo, that hinted that if you were still in this town you should bundle up your kids and get out now.
Birmingham is changing. From that.
If you can't see it now, if parks and museums and New York press clipping aren't enough to make you a believer, that's OK. Wait 'til next year.
Projects going on now, and those about to start, by then will take doubters by the lapels and shake them until the scales fall from their eyes.
Work on the Lyric Theatre will be finished - finished -- around the end of the year, adding another century-old jewel to a glittering Theater District.
Restoration of the historic Redmont Hotel will be completed this summer, with 115 refurbished rooms and a fresh lobby and bar.
Demolition will begin this month inside the Thomas Jefferson Hotel, that 20-story building that fell into disrepair under the Leer Tower name. I know we've heard it before, but builders now have permits and will begin ripping out the guts this month. They plan to build "edgy" apartments aimed at Millennials, with exposed concrete and steel and washer/driers you can dump clothes in before work, and have them washed and dried in the same contraption when you come home. I'd call that cool. Millennials, the target audience, might think it on fleek.
And there is the Publix, underway at Third Avenue South and 20th Street. By next year it will bring a long-awaited supermarket downtown, plus parking and shops and luxury apartments aimed at professionals.
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After all the doubt. After all the starts and stops and the false hopes, Birmingham is building a future that doesn't give two spits about holding on to past disappointments.
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Because all those who told us we could not do better are dead. Or gone. Or dying.
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